


Antagonism 101

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon's attempt at antagonizing Elena has surprising internal results. (Season one post episode fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antagonism 101

Being a Vampire meant that much more alcohol than seemed reasonable had to be consumed to achieve the effect a regular person got from it. So after the events at the tomb, Damon resolved to be the River Whiskey.

It was the only way to cope with the crushing disappointment. It also helped with conjuring other scenarios--ones in which Katherine hadn't just abandoned him while he pined for her for one hundred and forty five years. He imagined all kinds of reasons for why she had done what she did. None of them were particularly clever or original, and none of them really rang true.

If Katherine had wanted him, she would have had him, no matter what. The fact that he'd had no idea, all that time that she was still free somewhere in the world was the truth of it all.

It sickened him, and fucking and feeding off of three or four sorority girls for a few days had done little to take the edge off. What he needed was to hurt someone--not kill them, no that wasn't what inflicted pain. Death was a sweet release from all the torture of living, or unliving, as it were.

He needed to cause someone else's heart to cramp up in agony. He needed to see on someone else's face the incurable anguish that existed within his own chest.

He hears Elena calling for Stefan, and he has one of those impulsive thoughts that he just cannot contain.

Hey, at least this one doesn't involve going for anyone's jugular. Literally anyway. This could be a metaphorical jugular, now that he considers it.

(An experiment, if you will.)

She comes into Stefan's room, looking for Stefan, obviously, but Damon is the only one there, looking for a clean shirt to wear for the bachelor's auction.

"Better." He responds to her call for his brother as he comes walking out from behind the full length mirror. "Me." He's shirtless, though he thinks he's found something in Stefan's closet that will do.

She says, "You look, um..." but trails off as her gaze comes up to examine his face.

"Dashing?" he offers as her eyes slide over his bare skin and he closes the distance between them. There's a feeling there, something he can't associate with anything else in current memory. "Gorgeous?" he suggests. The pleasure seeping along his thoughts from her eyes darting away as though she doesn't know where to let them rest helps him add one more adjective. "Irresistable?" he asks, leaning into her space.

"Wrecked. You looked wrecked." She says it emphatically, and it seems to worry her.

(It should. It should worry them all. All of Mystic Falls, the denizens of which have no idea that a Vampire is on their Secret Town Council. And that secretly, he wants to kill them all.)

He quips, "No reason why." _Just 145 years of wasted time, heartache, and uncertainty._ "Do you know that I am one of Mystic Falls' most eligible bachelors?" He waggles his eyebrows to indicate the impressiveness of this edict.

"Huh." The noise she makes is nondescript, which sort of annoys him.

"Yep," he responds.

When she asks, "How are you doing?" he can feel her concern crawling up his skin like flesh eating bacteria.

"Never better," he says, though it lacks any jauntiness. He puts the shirt on, turns to examine his reflection in the mirror and says, "Yep," again, because it suggests casualness, even if he doesn't actually feel that. (But when does he ever say anything that reflects what he's really feeling? That serves no purpose whatsoever.) He groans as he slides the shirt over his shoulders. He needs people blood because there's too much alcohol in his system, and he's starting to feel shitty. "What can I do for ya?" he asks Elena. Perhaps inflicting pain upon her is not the best use of his self-destructive devices. He adds, "I'm a barrel of favors today," as he remembers Liz's face, and her pleading for his help for this stupid fundraiser. He'd been unable to say no to her, almost as if he'd wanted to _please_ Liz. He doesn't please anyone, but himself, ever. _That's what drinking too much, but not enough, will do for a person._ He pulls the shirt together at his mid-chest and watches his own fingers in the mirror as he says, "It's my newfound purpose." He muses out loud. "How can I help _people_."

It's bizarre.

Elena's voice reminds him that she's not there to see him. _Never him_. "I'm just meeting Stefan. We're going to the fundraiser."

His fingers aren't cooperating so well, and isn't this a perfect way to ratchet up the stakes? He can focus on himself, or he can antagonize Elena, just a bit. _That seems more like him._ "Help a guy out, will you?" he asks, turning to face her. "I can't get this..." he tugs on his shirt like a small child, makes a _help me_ face. (Thanks the universe for free flowing whiskey.)

Watches Elena as she heaves a sigh, but takes pity on him, her dark eyes showing an annoyed level of worry that he has to be sure not to respond to in anyway. She walks towards him and moves so she's standing between him and the mirror. He examines her as her eyes travel down to see what her fingers are doing as they easily button his shirt closed.

Hedonism, in some ways, degrades the simple pleasures of human interaction--but there's pleasure for him in the brush of her knuckles against his stomach as she cinches the buttons together. The light in her eyes as she looks at him is the kind of goodness he banished long ago, but something whispers now at the back of his mind, _this is exactly what draws him to her_.

(He can admit at least to himself that his interest in Elena is not strictly devoted to the how-it-will-annoy-Stefan aspect.)

"So I found out who my birth mother is," she says.

Damon just reacts. "Ugh, who cares?" Elena's eyes are instantly full of reproach (she's so good at that expression--she seems so much older than she actually is because of it). "She left you," he reminds her. "She sucks." He's slurring his words far more than necessary, but he has a feeling this could all work to his advantage. The brush of her fingers against his stomach is having the desired effect. Elena does have the ability to turn him on. Nothing overt, no dancing around in her underwear is necessary, or you know, exposing the soft place at the bottom of her neck to his teeth, or having her kneel in front of him, her mouth opening eagerly for his cock.

The antithesis of Katherine stands before him--though looking just like her makes it all harder to process--her fingers still resting just inside his shirt, and even though he just said something rather hurtful, it's truth should steal some of the sting from it if she thinks about it for even a short minute. He'd realized in the graveyard so many days ago now that he didn't want to hurt Elena. He'd held her pressed to his body, the trembling of her limbs from fear not exactly what he wanted to feel from her. He'd pushed it aside to achieve his objective, because he'd believed Katherine awaited him beneath the hard earth.

When Elena's eyes surreptiously drop to his lips, he has this moment, this split second where he wonders what she would do if he tried to kiss her now. It's bound to be entirely different than in the parking lot of the high school all those months earlier. She inhales, and he feels it, along with her heartbeat as it speeds up and it's just a small victory after the tomb of ruin, but he'll take it.

 _He'll take her._

"Stefan, there you are," she says, and the relief in her voice makes him wonder if she was just saved from him, or herself.

She walks around him, towards his brother, and so he goes back into kid mode, bitching about how Stefan's jacket is too small for him and causing his audience of two to look over at him with matching pitiful grimaces.

He gives Elena half a smirk as he buttons those last buttons towards the top of his shirt, the ones she didn't get to. He sees the realization in her eyes as he walks past her, and the triumph is a small spark along his nerve endings.

(It's all just a game. They both need to remember that.)

Her venomous words to Stefan as he leaves the room proves he hit the buttons he aimed for with perfect precision. He smiles to himself, self-congratulatory, but imagines her, soft and dewy beneath him.

Shaking himself, he substitutes the hazy, pleasant image with a hard one--him fucking her into oblivion.

Even he can't fool himself that the second image is Elena; he knows Katherine in his mind's eye better than he knows anything else.

It would be completely different with his brother's girlfriend. _Current girlfriend._

 _He_ would be different.

The truth reasserts itself hours later when he sees the tears in her eyes, hears the accusation in her voice, knows she thinks he killed someone who might matter to her.

It's strange to realize he doesn't want her to ever look at him like that again.


End file.
